Orange County residents could not help but be haunted by Denise Huber's disappearance in 1991. For years afterward, a painted portrait of the pretty 23-year-old was splashed on a wall facing the connector between the 405 freeway and Route 73–near where her car had broken down before being found abandoned.
The break in the case came in 1994, after a grisly discovery inside a Ryder truck parked in Prescott, Arizona.
Those who remember the Huber case, have forgotten about it or never knew about it will get to re-live it tonight on television.
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Her disappearance and discovery will be featured on the premiere episode of the Investigation Discovery channel's Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets, which is set to roll at 7 p.m. (but check local listings). The program “shares the unique perspective of the victim through fictionalized, first-person narration based on the facts of each case,” states an Investigation Discovery release.
“While the all-seeing narrator, 'Denise,' knows who was responsible for her murder, the series creatively allows viewers to piece together who is the culprit based on clues from investigators, family and friends as each story unfolds.”
Here's the channel's description of the episode titled “Cold As Ice”:
On a warm California evening in the summer of 1991, 23-year-old grad
student and music lover Denise Huber attended a concert. When she
failed to return home and her car was found abandoned on the freeway,
Denise's parents begun to fear the worst. Despite a widespread search,
Denise remained a missing person for three long years, but her parents
refused to give up hope that one day she would return home. Then, in
1994, an Arizona couple reported a mysterious moving van parked in a
stranger's yard. When the Arizona police investigated the van, what
they discovered was both chilling and heartbreaking.
Huber, a friend and a friend of that friend had been to a Morrissey
concert at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood the night of June 2,
1991. Afterward, they had a bite at El Paso Cantina in Long Beach. After
dropping her friend off at his Huntington Beach home around 2 a.m. June
3, Huber headed home for Newport Beach. Her blue 1984 Honda Accord was
found with a flat tire on
the connector south of Bear Street in Costa Mesa.
In 1994, Prescott paint shop owner Elaine Court arranged to buy paint from John Famalaro. Pulling up to Famalaro's home, Court found it odd that a Ryder truck was parked in the driveway, so odd that she called the local police. Officers arrived, looked inside the back of the truck and found a freezer. Huber's body was inside.
Detectives later found guns and handcuffs strewn about Famalaro's home. A box marked “X-Mas decorations” contained a bloody
hammer and nail puller. A Los Angeles County Sheriff's Patrol shirt was found inside a closet.
Prosecutors ultimately convinced a jury that Famalaro posed as a cop to gain Huber's trust after her car broke down in those early morning hours. He's now rotting on Death Row.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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